iQOO 15 Review: Continues To Deliver, But Why The Price Hike?

The iQOO 15 is here, and it arrives at an interesting moment. iQOO’s numbered flagships have always leaned heavily on raw performance, but this year, the brand is clearly attempting a more balanced flagship with a better design, improved cameras, longer software support, and the biggest battery the series has ever seen. However, we should also note that the iQOO 15 comes with a starting price of Rs 72,999, a full Rs 18,000 jump from its predecessor.

So the question is: does this new balance come at the cost of the very identity that built iQOO’s fanbase? That’s the thought I carried into my testing, and after weeks of living with the phone, I think I finally have the answer.

iQOO 15 Starts Fresh With a New Look

The iQOO 15 carries a familiar silhouette and looks very similar to its predecessor. However, once in hand, the refinements stand out immediately. The new frosted glass back feels more premium, the design language is cleaner, and the overall fit and finish have noticeably improved. This time, we have two colour options: Alpha (Black) and Legend (White). I have been using the Legend variant, which looks decent with a subtle racing-stripe aesthetic, minus the BMW M branding this time. But if you’re a fan of all-black aesthetics, the Alpha variant will give you John Wick vibes.

The Monster Halo Light around the camera module returns, but iQOO has dialled it down. This time, it is softer, more matte, and far less gimmicky than last year. Yes, this means if you turn it on during your day-to-day use, the phone will actually look good from the back.

About the protection, the iQOO 15 comes with an IP69 rating for dust and water resistance, including high-pressure water jets, along with Schott Xensation protection on both the front and back. So, unless you intentionally throw your phone on a hard rock, drop it from a moving vehicle, or take it swimming for more than 30 minutes, the smartphone should stay perfectly fine.

Moving on, the phone retains its boxy frame and isn’t particularly light at 220 grams, but it’s in the same ballpark as most recent iPhones. If you’re coming from the iQOO 13, this feels like a more mature, more polished version.

A Display That Checks (Almost) All the Boxes

The iQOO 15 continues iQOO’s tradition of offering a flagship-grade display at an aggressive price. The 6.85-inch LTPO AMOLED panel supports a 144Hz refresh rate, and the touch response is incredibly snappy, which pairs well with the gaming-oriented DNA. However, there’s one thing that still needs to be implemented across apps. You can only enjoy its 144Hz refresh rate in select games like BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile. In day-to-day use, the phone mostly sticks to 120Hz, just like every other flagship right now. So, it would be great to see broader support so the high refresh rate can be fully utilised across more apps and platforms.

The iQOO 15 also supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and offers a claimed peak brightness of 6000 nits. We have tested its brightness on manual mode with a luxmeter, and we recorded a peak brightness of 3710. In simple words, the display is bright enough for outdoor as well as indoor use. Colours look great, visuals are sharp, and HDR/Dolby Vision content really pops on this panel.

Out of the box, the display defaults to an HD resolution (a battery-saving choice), but switching to full resolution is just a toggle away. Brightness levels, colour tuning, and HDR performance are all solid, and OriginOS’s new animations feel even smoother here.

Performance and Battery

Let’s get into the fun part. On paper, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 paired with iQOO’s SuperComputing Chip Q3 gaming chip should make this a monster. In practice, it is true, but with one catch.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is paired with LPDDR5X Ultra RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. You can choose from 12/16GB RAM and 256/512GB storage variants.

As expected, the phone performs really well on benchmark tests. On the Antutu test, it scored over 3.7 million points. On the Geekbench 6 test, 3510 points were scored on the single-core test and 10391 on the multi-core test.

Where the phone started to fumble was the CPU throttling test. As you can see from the graph, it gets pretty red after some minutes of consistent pressure. The phone throttled to 51%, which is not a very good sign if we think about performance sustainability. However, this happens to flagship devices when they are new, but it also gets fixed with updates. So, fingers crossed, and let’s hope iQOO does read this review!

But fortunately, this doesn’t impact gaming. The iQOO 15 consistently pushes high frame rates across demanding titles, whether it’s 120 FPS in BGMI or near-constant 60 FPS gameplay in Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves. What stood out the most was how stable the frame delivery is. In Genshin, for instance, the average sat at 58.7 FPS, while the 5% lows stayed remarkably close at 54.7 FPS, numbers we don’t usually see this consistently on other phones in the segment. Even in heavier, less optimised titles like Grid Legends, the phone maintained predictable performance despite an initial crash, mirroring what we saw on the OnePlus 15.

But this stability comes with a cost: heat (something we expected in our CPU throttling test). The iQOO 15 heats up quickly and stays warm throughout prolonged sessions, especially around the frame and upper half of the display. During our controlled-temperature test, surface temperatures repeatedly hit the 40–43°C range, noticeable but not to the point where it becomes unplayable.

What’s interesting, though, is that despite running at high wattage and pushing sustained performance, the phone barely sips battery. A 30-minute BGMI session dropped only 6%, Grid Legends drained around 14% in an hour, and a full gaming cycle still left the phone hovering at 65%.

Speaking of battery, the 7000mAh battery is the biggest in the series, and it shows. Even under extreme load, the phone sips power intelligently. In our PC Mark test, the phone gave a screen-on time of over 23 hours with 20% battery still remaining. Which means this phone will easily last you over 2 days on moderate use.

Even the charging speed isn’t that bad. It takes about 40 minutes to juice up the phone from 20% to 100% with the 100W charger included in the box. It also supports 40W wireless charging.

Good Job With the Camera iQOO!

iQOO has equipped the 15 with three 50-megapixel sensors: a main camera, a periscope telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide. Numbers aside, the 3x telephoto is the star here.

Main Camera

With the main camera, I captured some sharp, well-balanced images with natural colours and good dynamic range. The iQOO 15 handles textures confidently and avoids the oversharpened look. And the overall output feels more refined and consistent, especially in daylight.

Low Light

Low-light performance is also pretty solid, with bright exposures, controlled highlights, and minimal noise. While taking the shots, the camera maintains definition without smudging details, and the processing stays on the natural side. It’s a noticeable improvement over previous generations.

Telephoto

Like I said earlier, the 3x telephoto camera is the highlight. It delivers crisp, clean images with accurate colours and strong contrast. Detail retention is impressive, and the output remains stable across different lighting conditions.

Portraits

Coming to portraits now, the pictures had an excellent subject separation, smooth background blur, and natural skin tones. The edge detection is also clean, and the depth effect feels more DSLR-like than before. iQOO has clearly refined its portrait tuning this year, especially at higher focal lengths.

How Does the New OriginOS feel?

With 5 years of major updates and 7 years of security patches, iQOO joins the long-update club. OriginOS 6 feels smoother, cleaner, and slightly more mainstream with its new animations and UI polish. It’s still feature-heavy, but the experience feels more cohesive now.

Final THOUGHTS!

The iQOO 15 is still very much an iQOO phone at heart; fast, aggressive, and built for gamers, but this time, it feels more refined. The new design, improved cameras, reliable battery life, and longer software support make it a far more mature flagship. And yes, while you are paying more this year, you are also getting more in return. In fact, the iQOO 15 now stands as a genuine contender against the likes of the OnePlus 15, iPhone 17, and other mainstream flagships.

The only real compromises are the heating and throttling under sustained load, which hold it back from being flawless. But if you want top-tier performance and a genuinely well-rounded flagship experience, the iQOO 15 is a great choice, and this is exactly why the phone is no longer being marketed as just a ‘gaming phone.’